The Dangerous Child Curricula: Part VI

In The Underground History of American Education, former teacher John Taylor Gatto exposed the destructive effects of the government school system.

Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.

...Socrates foresaw if teaching became a formal profession, something like this would happen. Professional interest is served by making what is easy to do seem hard; by subordinating the laity to the priesthood. School is too vital a jobs-project, contract giver and protector of the social order to allow itself to be "re-formed." It has political allies to guard its marches, that’s why reforms come and go without changing much. _Underground History Prologue

In the early days of the USA, children were not subjected to monolithic, factory style government education. They had to learn for themselves, learning by doing.

Young people in America were expected to make something of themselves, not to prepare themselves to fit into a pre-established hierarchy. Every foreign commentator notes the early training in independence, the remarkable precocity of American youth, their assumption of adult responsibility. _JTG Underground History

Things changed, once "civilised education" was enforced upon the unprepared American population. No longer precocious, American youth are infantilised, psychologically neotenised, and made into lifelong incompetent adolescents -- thanks to government schooling and the concomitant withering away of parental oversight.

More from John David Garcia's Early Childhood Curriculum:

		Physical		Biological
Avg. Level	Avg. Age	Physical Theory	Physical Practice	Biological Theory	Biological Practice
8.00	10.00	Continue with study of analytical geometry; begin solid analytical geometry using Cartesian notation; study the design of clocks, thermometers, and astronomical instruments; a study of Kepler and his ideas about nature and the music of the spheres	Continue with mini-cathedral building project; build full-fledged observatory with telescopes, but in spirit of Tycho Brahe make observations to deduce Kepler's laws; take two-week ocean voyage on sailing ship; discuss how Europe extended itself throughout the world in the 16th century	Continue vertebrate comparative anatomy through higher mammals and relate to human anatomy; show how embryology of all vertebrates overlaps at stages; relate to Greek evolutionary theories	Dissect and study vertebrate anatomy, tissues, and organs; go through modern systematics for all major mammalian orders; study embryology of related groups with microscope; the fetal pig and its full dissection
8.25	10.25	The early basis of the scientific revolution, Francis Bacon's Novum Organum, Boyle's studies, Galileo, the inventions of Leonardo da Vinci, the notion of experimental "proof"; finish analytical geometry and learn elementary calculus of variations, the concept of limit, and early concepts of calculus to explain Kepler's laws	Continue observation project, build improved clocks, finish sextant, finish mini-cathedral, study map making and various forms of map projections; set up experiments to test Boyle's laws, simple gas laws, experiments to test circulation of the blood	Human anatomy in detail; all organs, tissues and bones, gross structure of the brain; embryology using the fetal pig; use anatomical drawings of da Vinci and Vesalius, plus Gray's Anatomy; these integrated studies will last a year	Dissect human cadavers, male and female; observe tissues, and relate to other mammals; show similarity of all organs for all mammals; note how different human brain is
8.50	10.50	The Newtonian synthesis; full study using modern notation of Principia Mathematica and the Opticks; derive Newton's laws from Kepler's observations; derive calculus from the need to mathematically describe the laws of motion and gravity	Begin making windmill and waterwheel; predict the orbits of the planets using Newton's laws and a few astronomical observations; predict the eclipses of the sun by the moon at different spots of interest on the earth; repeat Newton's experiments showing that light is a system of particles, and that white light contains the spectrum	Continue studies of human anatomy and embryology	Continue anatomical dissection and microscopic studies; learn micro-techniques and make your own slides
8.75	10.75	Derive the calculus up to the use of simple differential equations; derive the formulas for optics and the creation of compound lenses; compare Newton's and Leibnitz' approach	Continue work on windmill and waterwheel; build a Newtonian reflecting telescope; built a chromatically-corrected set of compound lenses for the telescope already constructed; make an improved microscope	Continue studies of human anatomy	Continue work of previous quarter

		Psychosocial		Integration
Avg. Level	Avg. Age	Psychosocial Theory	Pyschosocial Practice	Integrative Theory	Integrative Practice
8.00	10.00	The rise of humanism leading to the Renaissance and the Reformation; the writings of Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin; the Council of Trent and the rise of the Jesuit order; Giordano Bruno, the philosophy of Descartes, and a review of his contemporaries	Essay on the ethical implications of the Reformation; were the Protestants any less bureaucratic? mutual discussion of essays among the octets; essay on the ethical implications of the scientific method and the new philosophy	The literary synthesis, Dante's Divina Comedia, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Marlowe's Dr. Faustus; the music of Monteverde and Palestrina; the art of Bosch, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo	Write an epic poem about the Christian view of Hell; write a play about a modern Don Quixote; continue study of organ and harpsichord; compose and perform music in the style of Monteverde and Palestrina
8.25	10.25	Hobbes, Montaigne, and Spinoza; read Spinoza's Ethics without analyzing proofs and note how this is a huge leap over the philosophy of Descartes and is the first totally rational treatment of ethics in history	Apply Spinoza's ethics to solving problems in practical ethics, politics, and religion; relate Spinoza's ethics to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism; apply Spinoza's model to formulating a model of the universe and evolution; write an essay on the meaning of Spinoza	The literary synthesis continues; read critically Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and Hamlet; study the music of Handel; study advanced musical theory and composition	Continue study of organ and harpsichord; build a harpsichord as a group project; write a last act to Hamlet in which Hamlet lives; play the music of Handel
8.50	10.50	The philosophical contemporaries of Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke, and Hume on improving the understanding; world history from 1000 AD to 1775	Essay on the hostility to Spinoza; an ethical analysis of the lives of Spinoza and Leibnitz; essay on why Europe embraced the scientific method and modern philosophy while the rest of the world did not	Spinoza's ethics, Christianity, Judaism, and respect for human rights; the rise of democratic ideology; Islam becomes totally entropic; conservative belief systems in the rest of the world; European predation	Group project to perform St. Matthew or St. John Passion of Bach; all learn to play the Musical Offering, the Art of the Fugue, in an octet; each octet does its own orchestration for the Art of the Fugue
8.75	10.75	Human rights and 18th century philosophy; Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and the Encyclopedists; the American Revolution; the philosophy and writings of Thomas Jefferson, the social contract, and the Federalist Papers	Essay on Rousseau and irrationalism; essay on the libertarian ideal and the democratic compromise; essay on the U.S. founding fathers allowing slavery to continue--was losing the revolution and hanging a better alternative? Write scenario on what would have happened if there had not been tolerance of slavery	The artistic synthesis continues; further study of the Art of the Fugue and the music of Mozart; the pessimistic writings of Jonathan Swift, a tragic interpretation of the democratic experiment	Compose and perform a conclusion to the Art of the Fugue; perform as a group project one Mozart opera of students' choice

Parents need to allow the child space, but at the same time need to carefully monitor the child's progress. The child should be allowed to take risks, to take on responsibilities, and to pursue rewards.

These are dangerous concepts, and should the powers-that-be ever suspect that significant numbers of children would be raised to be truly dangerous to the status quo, the reaction would be furious, and likely violent.